#essay ?

[mcmansionhell]

on neuschwanstein castle (part 1)

This is an essay in two parts.

Neuschwanstein Concept Drawing by the stage designer (!!) Christian Jank (1869).

There exist in architecture clear precedents to the McMansion that have nothing to do with suburban real estate. This is because “McMansionry” (let’s say) has many transferable properties. Among them can be included: 1) a diabolical amount of wealth that must be communicated architecturally in the most frivolous way possible, 2) a penchant for historical LARPing primarily informed by media (e.g. the American “Tuscan kitchen”) and 3) the execution of historical styles using contemporary building materials resulting in an aesthetic affect that can be described as uncanny or cheap-looking. By these metrics, we can absolutely call Neuschwanstein Castle, built by the architect Eduard Riedel for King Ludwig II of Bavaria, a McMansion.

Constructed from 1869 through 1886 – the year of Ludwig’s alleged suicide after having been ousted and declared insane – the castle cost the coffers of the Bavarian state and Ludwig himself no fewer than 6.2 million German gold marks. (That's an estimated 47 million euros today.) The castle's story is rife with well-known scandal. I'm sure any passing Swan Enthusiast is already familiar with Ludwig’s financial capriciousness, his called-off marriage and repressed homosexuality, his parasocial obsession with Richard Wagner, his complete and total inability to run his country, and his alleged "madness," as they used to call it. All of these combine to make Neuschwanstein inescapable from the man who commissioned it -- and the artist who inspired it. Say what you like about Ludwig and his building projects, but he is definitely remembered because of them, which is what most monarchs want. Be careful what you wish for.

Neuschwanstein gatehouse.

How should one describe Neuschwanstein architecturally? You’d need an additional blog. Its interiors alone (the subject of the next essay) range from Neo-Baroque to Neo-Byzantine to Neo-Gothic. There are many terms that can loosely define the palace's overall style: eclecticism, medieval revivalism, historicism, chateauesque, sclerotic monarchycore, etc. However, the the most specific would be what was called "castle Romanticism" (Burgenromantik). The Germans are nothing if not literal. Whatever word you want to use, Neuschwanstein is such a Sistine Chapel of pure sentimentality and sugary kitsch that theme park architecture – most famously, Disney's Cinderella’s castle itself – owes many of its medieval iterations to the palace's towering silhouette.

There is some truth to the term Burgenromantik. Neuschwanstein's exterior is a completely fabricated 19th century storybook fantasy of the Middle Ages whose precedents lie more truthfully in art for the stage. As a castle without fortification and a palace with no space for governance, Neuschwanstein's own program is indecisive about what it should be, which makes it a pretty good reflection of Ludwig II himself. To me, however, it is the last gasp of a monarchy whose power will be totally extinguished by that same industrial modernity responsible for the materials and techniques of Neuschwanstein's own, ironic construction.

In order to understand Neuschwanstein, however, we must go into two subjects that are equally a great time for me: 19th century medievalism - the subject of this essay - and the opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner, the subject of the next. (1)

Part I: Medievalisms Progressive and Reactionary

The Middle Ages were inescapable in 19th century Europe. Design, music, visual art, theater, literature, and yes, architecture were all besotted with the stuff of knights and castles, old sagas, and courtly literature. From arch-conservative nationalism to pro-labor socialism, medievalism's popularity spanned the entire political spectrum. This is because it owes its existence to a number of developments that affected the whole of society.

In Ludwig’s time, the world was changing in profound, almost inconceivable ways. The first and second industrial revolutions with their socioeconomic upheavals and new technologies of transport, manufacturing, and mass communication, all completely unmade and remade how people lived and worked. This was as true of the average person as it was of the princes and nobles who were beginning to be undermined by something called “the petit bourgeoisie.”

Sustenance farming dwindled and wage labor eclipsed all other forms of working. Millions of people no longer able to make a living on piecemeal and agricultural work flocked to the cities and into the great Molochs of factories, mills, stockyards, and mines. Families and other kinship bonds were eroded or severed by the acceleration of capitalist production, large wars, and new means of transportation, especially the railroad. People became not only alienated from each other and from their labor in the classical Marxist sense but also from the results of that labor, too. No longer were chairs made by craftsmen or clothes by the single tailor -- unless you could afford the bespoke. Everything from shirtwaists to wrought iron lamps was increasingly mass produced - under wretched conditions, too. Things – including buildings – that were once built to last a lifetime became cheap, disposable, and subject to the whimsy of fashion, sold via this new thing called “the catalog.”

William Morris' painting Le Belle Iseult (1868).

Unsurprisingly, this new way of living and working caused not a little discontent. This was the climate in which Karl Marx wrote Capital and Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. More specific to our interests, however, is a different dissenter and one of the most interesting practitioners of medievalism, the English polymath William Morris.

A lover of Arthurian legend and an admirer of the architect and design reformer John Ruskin, Morris was first trained in the office of architect G. E. Street, himself a die-hard Gothic Revivalist. From the very beginning, the Middle Ages can be found everywhere in Morris' work, from the rough-hewn qualities of the furniture he helped design to the floral elements and compositions of the art nouveau textiles and graphics he's most famous for -- which, it should be said, are reminiscent of 15th century English tapestries. In addition to his design endeavors, Morris was also a gifted writer and poet. His was a profound love for medieval literature, especially Norse sagas from Iceland. Some of these he even translated including the Volsunga Saga -- also a preoccupation of Wagner's. Few among us earn the title of polymath, but Morris' claim to it is undeniable. Aside from music, there really wasn't any area of creative life he didn't touch.

However, Morris' predilection for the medieval was not just a personal and aesthetic fascination. It was also an expression of his political rejection of the capitalist mode of production. As one of the founders of the English Arts & Crafts Movement, Morris called for a rejection of piecemeal machine labor, a return to handicraft, and overall to things made well and made with dignity. While this was and remains a largely middle class argument, one that usually leads down the road of ethical consumption, Morris was right that capitalism's failing of design and architecture did not just lie with the depreciated quality of goods, but the depreciated quality of life. His was the utopian call to respect both the object and the laborer who produced it. To quote from his 1888 essay called "The Revival of Architecture," Morris dreamed of a society that "will produce to live and not live to produce, as we do." Indeed, in our current era of AI Slop, there remains much to like about the Factory Slop-era call to take back time from the foreman's clock and once more make labor an act of enjoyable and unalienated creativity. Only now it's about things like writing an essay.

I bother to describe Morris at length here for a number of reasons. The first is to reiterate that medievalism's popularity was largely a response to socioeconomic changes. Additionally, since traditionalism - in Ludwig's time and in ours - still gets weaponized by right-wing losers, it's worth pointing out that not all practitioners of medievalism were politically reactionary in nature. However – and I will return to this later – medievalism, reactionary or not, remains inescapably nostalgic. Morris is no exception. While a total rejection of mass produced goods may seem quixotic to us now, when Morris was working, the era before mass industrialization remained at the fringes of living memory. Hence the nostalgia is perhaps to be expected. Unfortunately for him and for us, the only way out of capitalism is through it.

To return again to the big picture: whether one liked it or not, the old feudal world was done. Only its necrotic leftovers, namely a hereditary nobility whose power would run out of road in WWI, remained. For Ludwig purposes, it was a fraught political time in Bavaria as well. Bavaria, weird duck that it was, remained relatively autonomous within the new German Reich. Despite the title of king, Ludwig, much to his chagrin - hence the pathetic Middle Ages fantasizing - did not rule absolutely. His was a constitutional monarchy, and an embattled one at that. During the building of Neuschwanstein, the king found himself wedged between the Franco-Prussian War and the political coup masterminded by Otto von Bismarck that would put Europe on the fast track to a global conflict many saw as the atavistic culmination of all that already violent modernity. No wonder he wanted to hide with his Schwans up in the hills of Schwangau.

The very notion of a unified German Reich (or an independent Kingdom of Bavaria) was itself indicative of another development. Regardless if one was liberal or conservative, a king, an artist or a shoe peddler, the 19th century was plagued by the rise of modern nationalism. Bolstered by new ideas in "medical" “science,” this was also a racialized nationalism. A lot of emotional, political, and artistic investment was put into the idea that there existed a fundamentally German volk, a German soil, a German soul. This, however, was a universalizing statement in need of a citation, with lots of political power on the line. Hence, in order to add historical credence to these new conceptions of one’s heritage, people turned to the old sources.

Within the hallowed halls of Europe's universities, newly minted historians and philologists scoured medieval texts for traces of a people united by a common geography and ethnicity as well as the foundations for a historically continuous state. We now know that this is a problematic and incorrect way of looking at the medieval world, a world that was so very different from our own. A great deal of subsequent medieval scholarship still devotes itself to correcting for these errors. But back then, such scholarly ethics were not to be found and people did what they liked with the sources. A lot of assumptions were made in order to make whatever point one wanted, often about one's superiority over another. Hell, anyone who's been on Trad Guy Deus Vult Twitter knows that a lot of assumptions are still made, and for the same purposes.(2)

Meanwhile, outside of the academy, mass print media meant more people were exposed to medieval content than ever before. Translations of chivalric romances such as Wolfgang von Eschenbach’s Parzival and sagas like the Poetic Edda inspired a century’s worth of artists to incorporate these characters and themes into their work. This work was often but of course not always nationalistic in character. Such adaptations for political purposes could get very granular in nature. We all like to point to the greats like William Morris or Richard Wagner (who was really a master of a larger syncretism.) But there were many lesser attempts made by weaker artists that today have an unfortunate bootlicking je nais se quoi to them.

I love a minor tangent related to my interests, so here's one: a good example of this nationalist granularity comes from Franz Grillparzer’s 1823 pro-Hapsburg play König Ottokars Glück und Ende, which took for its source a deep cut 14th century manuscript called the Styrian Rhyming Chronicle, written by Ottokar Aus Der Gaul. The play concerns the political intrigue around King Ottokar II of Bohemia and his subsequent 1278 defeat at the hands of Grillparzer’s very swagged out Rudolf of Habsburg. Present are some truly fascinating but extremely obscure characters from 13th Holy Roman Empire lore including a long-time personal obsession of mine, the Styrian ministerial and three-time traitor of the Great Interregnum, Frederick V of Pettau. But I’m getting off-topic here. Let's get back to the castle.

The Throne Room at Neuschwanstein

For architecture, perhaps the most important development in spreading medievalism was this new institution called the "big public museum." Through a professionalizing field of archaeology and the sickness that was colonialist expansion, bits and bobs of buildings were stolen from places like North Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, and Byzantium, all of which had an enormous impact on latter 19th century architecture. (They were also picked up by early 20th century American architects from H. H. Richardson to Louis Sullivan.) These orientalized fragments were further disseminated through new books, monographs, and later photography.

Meanwhile, developments in fabrication (standardized building materials), construction (namely iron, then steel) and mass production sped things up and reduced costs considerably. Soon, castles and churches in the image of those that once took decades if not a century to build were erected on countless hillsides or in little town squares across the continent. These changes in the material production of architecture are key for understanding "why Neuschwanstein castle looks so weird."

Part of what gives medieval architecture its character is the sheer embodiment of labor embedded in all those heavy stones, stones that were chiseled, hauled, and set by hand. The Gothic cathedral was a precarious endeavor whose appearance of lightness was not earned easily, which is why, when writing about their sublimity, Edmund Burke invoked not only the play of light and shadow, but the sheer slowness and human toil involved.

This is, of course, not true of our present estate. Neuschwanstein not only eschews the role of a castle as a “fortress to be used in war” (an inherently stereotomic program) but was erected using contemporary materials and techniques that are simply not imbued with the same age or gravitas. Built via a typical brick construction but clad in more impressive sandstone, it's all far too clean. Neuschwanstein's proportions seem not only chaotic - towers and windows are strewn about seemingly on a whim - they are also totally irreconcilable with the castle's alleged typology, in part because we know what a genuine medieval castle looks like.

Ludwig's palace was a technological marvel of the industrial revolution. Not only did Neuschwanstein have indoor plumbing and central heat, it also used the largest glass windows then in manufacture. It's not even an Iron Age building. The throne room, seen earlier in this post, required the use of structural steel. None of this is to say that 19th century construction labor was easy. It wasn't and many people still died, including 30 at Neuschwanstein. It was, however, simply different in character than medieval labor. For all the waxing poetic about handiwork, I’m sure medieval stonemasons would have loved the use of a steam crane.

It's true that architectural eclecticism (the use of many styles at once) has a knack for undermining the presumed authenticity or fidelity of each style employed. But this somewhat misunderstands the crime. The thing about Neuschwanstein is that its goal was not to be historically authentic at all. Its target realm was that of fantasy. Not only that, a fantasy informed primarily by a contemporary media source. In this, it could be said to be more architecturally successful.

The fantasy of medievalism is very different than the truth of the Middle Ages. As I hinted at before, more than anything else, medievalism was an inherently nostalgic movement, and not only because it was a bedrock of so much children's literature. People loved it because it promised a bygone past that never existed. The visual and written languages of feudalism, despite it being a terrible socioeconomic system, came into vogue in part because it wasn't capitalism. We must remember that the 19th century saw industrial capitalism at its newest and rawest. Unregulated, it destroyed every natural resource in sight and subjected people, including children, to horrific labor conditions. It still does, and will probably get worse, but the difference is, we're somewhat used to it by now. The shock's worn off.

All that upheaval I talked about earlier made people long for a simplicity they felt was missing. This took many different forms. The rapid advances of secular society and the incursion of science into belief made many crave a greater religiosity. At a time when the effects of wage labor on the family had made womanhood a contested territory, many appeals were made to a divine and innocent feminine a la Lady Guinevere. Urbanization made many wish for a quieter world with less hustle and bustle and better air. These sentiments are not without their reasons. Technological and socioeconomic changes still make us feel alienated and destabilized, hence why there are so many medieval revivals even in our own time. (Chappell Roan of Arc anyone?) Hell, our own rich people aren't so different from Ludwig either. Mark Zuckerburg owns a Hawaiian island and basically controls the fates of the people who live there lord-in-the-castle-style.

Given all this, it's not surprising that of the products of the Middle Ages, perhaps chivalric romance was and remains the most popular. While never a real depiction of medieval life (no, all those knights were not dying on the behalf of pretty ladies), such stories of good men and women and their grand adventures still capture the imaginations of children and adults alike. (You will find no greater fan of Parzival than yours truly.) It's also no wonder the nature of the romance, with its paternalistic patriarchy, its Christianity, its sentimentality around courtly love, and most of all its depiction of the ruling class as noble and benevolent – appealed to someone like Ludwig, both as a quirked-up individual and a member of his class.

It follows, then, that any artist capable of synthesizing all these elements, fears, and desires into an aesthetically transcendent package would've had a great effect on such a man. One did, of course. His name was Richard Wagner.

In our next essay, we will witness one of the most astonishing cases of kitsch imitating art. But before there could be Neuschwanstein Castle, there had to be this pretty little opera called Lohengrin.

---

(1) If you want to get a head start on the Wagner stuff, I've been writing about the Ring cycle lately on my Substack: https://www.late-review.com/p/essays-on-wagners-ring-part-1-believing

(2) My favorite insane nationalist claim comes from the 1960s, when the Slovene-American historian Joseph Felicijan claimed that the US's democracy was based off the 13th century ritual of enthronement practiced by the Dukes of Carinthia because Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of Jean Bodin's Les six livres de la Republique (1576) in which the rite was mentioned. For more information, see Peter Štih's book The Middle Ages Between the Alps and the Northern Adriatic (p. 56 for the curious.)

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[mournfulroses]

Virginia Woolf, from The Death of the Moth and other Essays; “Madame de Sévigné,”

[asarigg]

Body for Sale: a second reading of a disturbing past (csa)

Well, this part of the essay is the one where I imply a possible sexual assault towards Koujaku when he was a teenager, but since I was hesitant at first of talking more about it because I didn't want to be insensitive I made it shorter than originally intended. I was encouraged to expand a little bit on it, so I edited it. Since the post is already kinda long, I thought of doing a separate post for those interested. Please don't hesitate to correct me if you deem it needed.

I’ve sometimes wondered if there was some sort of sexual abuse on Ryuuhou’s part towards Koujaku. Nothing is implied canonically, at least physically, but the erotic connotations of the story of the tattoo artist he’s based on, the sadism, the drugging in order to do something non-consensually, and his constant references to love make me think of it happening on a symbolic level. I think it’s obvious that Ryuuhou loves Koujaku, in his own way, as his creation, and he’s talking about love at first sight and the similarity of love and hate. Besides, the way Koujaku acts can be easily associated with it.

Even though he appears to be charming and flirty, he actually has a very low self-esteem, seeing himself as worthless, dirty, and constantly self-blaming for what happened. His tattoo being his shame and filth, something he doesn’t want to taint Aoba with, works just as an allegory of victims so commonly feeling guilty and dirty (causing them to shower more regularly than before in an attempt to wash it away). He shows unconformity when Aoba wants to touch him in bed (something that with time and the support of a loved one gets a little better), and when he tries to touch and wash away his dirt, his shame, his tattoo, Koujaku jumps at contact, which could also be interpreted as having a flashback as part of his ptsd.

All the anger he feels inside could also be part of the consequences. And he mostly shows his hatred towards Ryuuhou, even though his father is supposedly still alive and was the one who did the most damage to them, especially his mother, whom he cared about the most. At the end of the day Ryuuhou “just” did the tattoo and his father has been treating them like that for years. So why does he tunnel all his rage only to him? Budget and time limit reasons? Maybe, but in this essay we’re not taking that. Obviously Ryuuhou was the one that made him lose it, torturing him ever since the beginning only to anger him, ultimately causing the death of his mother. Maybe he was too used to see his father being aggressive with them, something to be expected, kind of like how it's established that men are more violence driven and women are emotion driven. But it can also be read as the response Koujaku had to a possible abuse. Physical punishment was to be expected, but sexual abuse?

Ryuuhou took advantage of his situation, to stop him from resisting he could always use his mother. We’ve already seen Ryuuhou being referenced as male and Koujaku as the female counterpart, being lovers and enemies at the same time, with the female being associated with the powerless, abused victim, submissive, and being controlled by the male, as disgusting as it sounds. Ever since he was tattooed his body did not belong to him anymore, Ryuuhou made sure to mark his body and mind so that he could never forget him. He could have found refuge in his religious practices as well.

There’s always stigma around these cases, and the stigma around male victims makes it especially harder for them to speak about what happened to them. That sense of powerlessness, of losing control, of being less of a man, causing them having trouble with their identity, all of it is wrapped in toxic masculinity. And all of this is seen in Koujaku. He keeps all his feelings for himself, feeling distant from other people and engaging in a lonely way of life.

There are people that report having trouble with their relationships with others not only because of the trauma that happened to them, but also out of fear of doing that very same thing to someone else.

This traumatic event usually makes victims apprehensive of any sexual activity, but there’s a considerable large number of victims that, opposite to this, develop hypersexuality. His sexual life is more important to Koujaku's character than it may seem at first (like it's just a quirk of him), he sees his body as a tool for the pleasure of others, meanwhile his own pleasure is not important. He developed an unhealthy way of interacting with others, therefore he developed unhealthy sexual practices. This view of him being sort of a prostitute isn’t so far away. Flame Willow, the part of Platinum Jail they end in, pretty much looks like a red light district. It’s introduced as a place for “passionate folks to get their thrills”, an euphemism.

He also smokes and drinks, which are not talked about a lot as an addiction to cope with his pain. In the Drama CD though they do talk about it as a way to escape the stress he’s facing because of the Tamaokuri, so we can assume that he uses these two and possibly developed an addiction, wanting to drink until blacking out to forget for a moment.

Even if the sexual abuse didn’t happen canonically, the metaphor is as close as it can be, so it’s in your hands how you want to see it. Even if it’s hard to talk about something like this, I really like how this was built, because something that isn’t sexual abuse (at least canonically, and I wonder if the allegory was intentional or not) actually feels like it, something that changed a person’s entire life, his perception of himself and the people he interacts with, an event with an actual weight, something I missed from literally any actual SA scene that we got in the rest of the game.

[questalkcomics]

I know a lot of people feel connected to Bucky and rightfully so, but The Winter Soldier, as a character is as interesting and complex.

Yes, Bucky and the Winter Soldier are two different person.

In the comics, after his return to life, the WS was living and acting for a while before some issues in his conditioning left the Department X with no other choice than putting him on stasis between missions.

As for the rest, he did have a personnality as a loyal assassin to the Soviet Union.

This is the time where he came closer to Nat and eventually fell in love with her.

What If made a smart and interesting choice with the third episode of season 3 by giving us glimpse of the Winter Soldier as a character.

Not an entity or a mindless killing machine but someone, or at least, a body whose soul and memories were taken away.

“... I'm a nobody. I can't even remember anything. Nothing. Not even my name.”

The tragic part in this is how the Winter Soldier feel resigned as he is, he knows he only has one function, he's even suprised when he failed to kill the Starks and secure all the serum.

This mark a clear difference between Bucky and the Winter Soldier, the latter may feel more "empty" but his quest or finding out a purpose in this episode made him a complete character.

[nyancrimew]

NEW ESSAY: anarchism starts in the now: hope for a better future

there is still time

cover art: @punkitt-is-here

[manicpixiedckgirl]

one thing you have to get ready for as a trans woman who's about to come out is certain cis people are going want nothing to do with you afterwards. we all know this, we all talk about this. transphobes going transphobe

but what i dont think we talk about enough is you need to be prepared for a second wave of this. it will come later. it's not tied to anything body change or surgery or whatever.

trans women are treated so poorly by society that we inevitably shrink. we learn how to exist in the spaces that will have us, even if that means cramming ourselves into boxes that don't really fit, being treated in ways we often don't like, doing things we often don't like doing, often even fucking people we don't want to fuck.

at some point, you're going to learn to stand up for yourself. i don't say this to scare you into thinking you'll become a 'mean trans girl' or whatever. but just like transitioning in the first place, it's change or die. you found the first safe harbor and fashioned your anchor to it but you can't go on living with people who don't respect you, working a job you're too smart for, living a life you don't really love.

and when you do, there will be cis people in your life who only liked that meek, quiet girl who would do as she's told. some of these people were malicious, doing it on purpose because they've known enough trans women to know who's vulnerable. some are doing it unintentionally, believing themselves to be a good ally, you've just gotten angry and bitter (this one hurts the most). and some just plain won't like the person you really are, having only known the people pleaser they got to know.

but it's change or die. if you're not you, you're not living. there are so many better people just waiting to love you, but you won't find them chasing after cis approval. and girl, i promise you, you deserve so much more than what you're getting right now. be strong. you've been strong before. i love you.

[abedalahdiaburas]

The children have returned to their studies, but without a school or shelter. ☹️

They are my siblings’ children, enduring the hardships of war in Gaza. 💔

🇵🇸🍉

Vetted by @/gazavetters and is #2 on their vetted list. Also personally confirmed and vetted by @/mohammedalanqer ( #174 on Verified fundraiser list by el-shab-hussein and nabulsi )

@sabertoothwalrus @90-ghost @ankle-beez

@afro-elf @anarcho-smarmyism @amygdalae

@a-shade-of-blue @lesbianmaxevans

@leepacey @leepacey @lexbianrose @moringmark @nonbinarymerbabe @briaristheworst @bundibird @weirdmarioenemies @queenofglitch @ot3

💔🍉🇵🇸

[writer-logbook]

How to introduce your character in 3 steps

A friend of mine was the source of this very pertinent question. So I decided to write a blog entry about it. Because how do you introduce your character without sounding fake ?

Remember that, in real life situation, no one calls you by your name. Have you noticed that none of your friends is adressing you by your name, unless they're trying to get your attention or that something serious is happening ? That should be the same in your story : find a situation where it is relevant to use names. Or stick to nicknames, which is a more common way to address your friends.

Use another character. If you can’t come up with a situation, you can always rely on a side character to introduce your MC. It’s also the perfect way to describe your character rather than simply using mirror, which is convenient yet very cliché. But the fun thing to do is to make several characters talk about your MC : their opinion might go in different directions due to their relationships, their own sensibility and attention to details. It’s also a good way to breath life into your side characters so please consider that option seriously.

The reader doesn’t need to know everything, especially on the very first page. Unless the info is relevant to the plot, there is no need for the reader to know MC’s favourite food or eye’s color. If you’re on character-sheet-side (which I’m not btw), you should be careful about wether the reader the story will progress or not. Try to be balanced !

What I really want to stress in this article is the importance of action when introducing your character. You want the reader to know your character is courageous ? Put them directly into a situation where they can show courage. You want to describe their hair color ? What about that moment when the light is flickering in a way that gives their hair a peculiar effect that catches the eye of another character ?

Don’t worry, your creativity will always find a way ~

[k9effect]

Tiktok's censorship of words like rape, kill, murder, abortion etc. etc. as well as censoring hard to hear topics, over the past few years has deeply contributed to the sanitisation of the internet and therefore directly resulted in the birth of "fandom purists" and the destruction of old fandom culture (the death of "don't like, don't read", "ship and let ship" mindsets as well as safe spaces for dark and "immoral"/unethical storytelling i.e "dead dove: do not eat") in a way that has fundamentally changed the mindsets of people who are new to fandom spaces and now view these such topics as wildly inappropriate for any social space as well as deeming anyone who is intrigued by them narratively or creatively as "immoral" and a bad person. In this essay I will

[lifeinked]

Why I Love Caitlyn, and Why You Hate Her

⚠️ READER DISCRETION: I am not condoning Caitlyn’s actions and behavior, I am simply exploring the depth of her character and explaining what motivated her pursuit of revenge.

There’s no denying the gravity of Caitlyn’s actions as they are unquestionably wrong. However, her character cannot be reduced to these actions alone. This sudden, devastating behavior of hers is shaped by a thread of complex motivations and circumstances, but many choose not to acknowledge this simply because of her elite background. 

Like many others, I initially overlooked the point of the gassing in Zaun, which I think is a crucial thing everyone must first understand before diving into the discourse over Caitlyn's character. 

The Grey, often misunderstood as being used indiscriminately, was strategically deployed against the Chem-Barons to limit collateral damage. Caitlyn chose precision over chaos, targeting those directly responsible for Zaun’s turmoil. Furthermore, Caitlyn didn’t kill the Chem-Barons; she captured them, with net-deploying bullets. While her methods are controversial, they reflect a calculated approach; mischaracterizing her raid as a reckless attack ignores these details.

This isn’t to deny or excuse the fact that Caitlyn did, indeed, gas Zaun. Who’s to say that gas didn’t seep into the streets where innocent Zaunites roamed, harming them in the process? It’s entirely possible that innocents were affected and devastated. However, my brief explanation is only added to gain better perspective over the objectives of the gassing itself.

Now moving on, despite her privileged upbringing, Caitlyn shows a genuine effort to understand and connect with Zaunites. She places her trust in Vi, a Zaunite she’s never met before, to guide her in her search for Silco. Her journey through the undercity opens her eyes to the struggles of its people, challenging her perspective.

In S1E4, when investigating the airship attack, she encounters an undercity resident and reassures him, “I can protect you.” Later in the season, when Vi gets stabbed, Caitlyn encounters someone formerly connected to Vi. He’s grown a distaste over himself due to his appearance, and yet Caitlyn embraces him with compassion and tenderness, as a silent sign of gratitude. Then, she surrenders her cherished firearm—her only means of protection—in return for a healing potion to save Vi. In S1E7, Caitlyn’s heartfelt monologue in her conversation with Ekko perfectly captures her hope and determination: “This city needs healing. More than I ever realized. Please, let me help you.”

When Caitlyn and Vi stand in front of the Council, Caitlyn declares: “Councilors, this is Vi. She was born in the undercity. Even though we failed her in countless ways, she risked everything to show me what life is really like down there. People are starving, sick, ravaged by Shimmer. They live in constant fear of the coordinated efforts of violent crime lords.” This monologue alone shows how Caitlyn embodies optimism, believing in the inherent goodness of people, even Zaunites. It also shows that she is very willing to fight for them; she sees helping Zaunites as an act of bringing justice and equality into this world.

Many overlook the depth of Cassandra and Caitlyn’s relationship, reducing it to a simple narrative of a daughter mourning her mother. However, Caitlyn’s mourning is more layered than that. Throughout her life, she has been rebellious, driven by a desire to uncover the reality her mother tried to shield her from. In S1E4, Caitlyn reflects on this by saying, “She’d do anything to keep me from seeing the real world.” Caitlyn’s defiance wasn’t just rebellion for its own sake—it was a stand for her ideals. She sought enlightenment and understanding, even if it meant stepping outside the privileged bubble her mother built for her. By venturing into the undercity and aligning herself with Vi, Caitlyn rejected her mother's own ideals.

Here's another scene in S1E8 that emphasizes this:

Cassandra: You're a Councilor's daughter. Your actions reflect on the entire body. Caitlyn: My actions? You know what else reflects on the Council? Its citizens living on the streets. Being poisoned. Having to chose between a kingpin who wants to exploit them and a government who doesn't give a shit!

In a way, her actions mirror Vi’s: just as Vi betrayed her people by working with the enforcers, Caitlyn betrayed her own mother by involving herself with Zaunites. Remember: The last time we see Caitlyn and Cassandra interact on-screen is during Caitlyn’s plea before the Council. And in that moment, Caitlyn was fighting to protect the very kind that would soon kill her own mother.

You say that Caitlyn’s drastic shift is unjustified, as she’s only experienced a fraction of the suffering Zaunites have been enduring. But that’s precisely the point! Her transformation shows how personal loss can drive the change of one’s entire character; she’s never experienced loss before which is why it feels so heavy for her. And unlike Zaunites, Caitlyn actually has the power to act on her grief. Zaunites have only known misery their whole lives. When their loved one dies, they know there is nothing more they can do but grieve. They don’t have an inch of the privilege and military support Caitlyn has. If you had given them the same resources as Caitlyn, they wouldn’t hesitate to bring ruin to Piltover. Simply put, they don’t fight Piltovans because they don’t want to, but because they can’t.

When Jinx takes her mother away, her compassionate ideals completely shatter. Having always sought justice and understanding for Zaun, Caitlyn feels deeply betrayed, as her faith in the good within every Zaunite is overturned. Her mother’s death becomes a turning point—driving her to abandon her ideals and adopt Piltover’s disdain for the undercity, finally understanding the resentment many Piltovans harbor.

We also tend to forget that, aside from losing her mother, Caitlyn has directly suffered under the hands of Jinx. Caitlyn was held captive by Jinx in Season 1—and God knows what was done to her during that period. In the tea party scene, we see Caitlyn break down in tears, visibly flinching when Jinx moves toward her. It’s clear that Jinx has traumatized Caitlyn not just once, but twice. These experiences deeply shape Caitlyn’s actions moving forward. The pain and fear she’s endured push her to a place where she’s willing to sacrifice almost anything, even if it means putting a child’s life at risk (Isha's) or severing ties with Vi.

While they share their differences, Caitlyn and Jinx are the perfect example of foil characters. Here’s an instance which proves this: Both allow themselves to be influenced by manipulative, powerful figures all while being in a vulnerable state of mind.

Jinx is haunted by guilt; her attempt to save her family only ended up killing them, leaving her with the crushing weight of self-blame. She clings to Silco, not because he was the father she needed, but because he was the father she wanted. Silco indulged her destructive tendencies, keeping her at an all-time high on the edges of chaos. Fragile and broken, Powder crossed paths with Silco at the right moment; he saw the perfect chance to mold her into someone bewildered, unrestrained, and astray.

Caitlyn has her own Silco: Ambessa, the ruthless Noxian leader with a brutal philosophy of war. Ambessa enters Caitlyn’s life at a pivotal moment, stepping in just as Caitlyn is grappling with the devastating loss of her mother. In a spiral of self-identity, Caitlyn struggles with the weight of Piltover’s expectations and her unresolved guilt over her strained relationship with her mother (as explained in previous paragraphs). Just as young Powder mourns her family, Caitlyn blames herself for the death of her mother. Caitlyn got herself involved with the Zaunites even when she was warned not to, and at the expense of her defiance came the death of her mother. Driven by guilt and a thirst for vengeance, Caitlyn steps fully into her role, declaring in S2E1: “I am a decorated officer. Leader of House Kiramman.”

Jinx and Caitlyn share a tragic parallel: they both lose everyone they hold dear. Jinx loses Vi, Vander, Claggor, and Mylo. Caitlyn is left without Cassandra, Vi, Jayce, Mel, and Tobias. Stripped of their support systems, they are left isolated, with no one to confide in or rely on. They become vulnerable, used as pawns in the larger schemes of Silco and Ambessa’s strategic games.

Caitlyn's inner turmoil is exactly why Ambessa’s manipulation is so effective. Caitlyn is compelled to take revenge, but she doesn’t know how to. And without anyone else to guide her, she places her complete trust in Ambessa's expertise. Ambessa doesn’t just give Caitlyn the authority and power to avenge her mother; she teaches her how to use them to their full potential. She toys with Caitlyn's vulnerability, making her adopt the Noxian values of wrath, bloodshed, and ruthlessness. 

It’s easy to downplay Caitlyn’s grief since she comes from an elite upbringing. While Cassandra Kiramman is laid to rest in a golden casket with a proper burial, countless innocents in Zaun become victims of merciless violence, being left to die on the streets. After the timeskip however, Caitlyn is shown to recognize the moral cost of her actions. Though the series portrays this realization subtly, it becomes evident that Caitlyn is grappling with the inhumanity and immorality of her pursuit of revenge. In S2E4, this internal conflict comes to light during her conversation with Ambessa. When Ambessa attempts to stoke her fury again, Caitlyn disarms her with a piercing question: “Why is peace always the justification for violence?”

Here's another scene that subtly depicts her realization and remorse:

Caitlyn: You're a monster. Why? Why do all this? Singed: Why does anyone commit acts others deem unspeakable? ... For love.

When Caitlyn steps further and sees Orianna, she realizes that Singed's revenge is a reflection of her own: a person grieving the death of their family member. Here, there's a saddened glint in her eyes. She finally understands now, that love and grief made her do things that once seemed so foreign to her. In this case, going against her own principles just to succeed in her revenge.

Caitlyn is now forever haunted by the outcome of her mistakes, but she knows her past cannot be erased. During her confrontation with Jinx in the prison, she admits, “No amount of good deeds can undo our crimes.” While this statement is directed at Jinx, it feels like Caitlyn also holds this against herself for her own wrongdoings. 

Caitlyn’s acts of atonement are done quietly. She’s not good with words; she’s bad at articulating how she feels. Ironically, Vi is much better than Caitlyn when it comes to confronting and vocalizing internal conflict. So instead, Caitlyn’s actions speak for herself. By removing the guards at the prison, she tacitly allows Vi the opportunity to rescue Jinx. She knows Vi will come to save her sister, and yet she lets her. She finally lets go of Jinx and the grudge she held against her, as a silent act of her love for Vi.

And in S2E9, Sevika is shown to be sitting among the Councilors. But thanks to a fan's keen eyes, we find out that she is sat particularly on Cassandra Kiramman's chair (which not many notice). By allowing a Zaunite to occupy her mother's seat, Caitlyn gives them a chance to be rightfully represented, a chance for their voices and suffering to finally be heard. It’s a quiet display of Caitlyn’s evolution and willingness to bridge the divide between Piltover and Zaun.

That said, Arcane’s ending left much to be desired regarding Caitlyn’s arc. The heavy focus on Hextech overshadowed the sociopolitical dynamics of Piltover and Zaun. This is the main reason a lot of hate is thrown toward Caitlyn—there is an act of accountability, but there a lack of consequence. While Caitlyn acknowledges her mistakes, her privileged status keeps her from real repercussions, unlike the tragedy other characters had to face. This is frustrating, even to me, as someone whose favorite character is Caitlyn. Yet, in a way, it realistically portrays the inequalities in our own world—where the elite are often shielded from justice, and repentance is the closest they ever come to redemption.

[mcmansionhell]

the motel room, or: on datedness

I.

Often I find myself nostalgic for things that haven't disappeared yet. This feeling is enhanced by the strange conviction that once I stop looking at these things, I will never see them again, that I am living in the last moment of looking. This is sense is strongest for me in the interiors of buildings perhaps because, like items of clothing, they are of a fashionable nature, in other words, more impermanent than they probably should be.

As I get older, to stumble on something truly dated, once a drag, is now a gift. After over a decade of real estate aggregation and the havoc it's wreaked on how we as a society perceive and decorate houses, if you're going to Zillow to search for the dated (which used to be like shooting fish in a barrel), you'll be searching aimlessly, for hours, to increasingly no avail, even with all the filters engaged. (The only way to get around this is locational knowledge of datedness gleaned from the real world.) If you try to find images of the dated elsewhere on the internet, you will find that the search is not intuitive. In this day and age, you cannot simply Google "80s hotel room" anymore, what with the disintegration of the search engine ecosystem and the AI generated nonsense and the algorithmic preference for something popular (the same specific images collected over and over again on social media), recent, and usually a derivative of the original search query (in this case, finding material along the lines of r/nostalgia or the Backrooms.)

To find what one is looking for online, one must game the search engine with filters that only show content predating 2021, or, even better, use existing resources (or those previously discovered) both online and in print. In the physical world of interiors, to find what one is looking for one must also now lurk around obscure places, and often outside the realm of the domestic which is so beholden to and cursed by the churn of fashion and the logic of speculation. Our open world is rapidly closing, while, paradoxically, remaining ostensibly open. It's true, I can open Zillow. I can still search. In the curated, aggregated realm, it is becoming harder and harder to find, and ultimately, to look.

But what if, despite all these changes, datedness was never really searchable? This is a strange symmetry, one could say an obscurity, between interiors and online. It is perhaps unintentional, and it lurks in the places where searching doesn't work, one because no one is searching there, or two, because an aesthetic, for all our cataloguing, curation, aggregation, hoarding, is not inherently indexable and even if it was, there are vasts swaths of the internet and the world that are not categorized via certain - or any - parameters. The internet curator's job is to find them and aggregate them, but it becomes harder and harder to do. They can only be stumbled upon or known in an outside, offline, historical or situational way. If to index, to aggregate, is, or at least was for the last 30 years, to profit (whether monetarily or in likes), then to be dated, in many respects, is the aesthetic manifestation of barely breaking even. Of not starting, preserving, or reinventing but just doing a job.

We see this online as well. While the old-web Geocities look and later Blingee MySpace-era swag have become aestheticized and fetishized, a kind of naive art for a naive time, a great many old websites have not received the same treatment. These are no less naive but they are harder to repackage or commodify because they are simple and boring. They are not "core" enough.

As with interiors, web datedness can be found in part or as a whole. For example, sites like Imgur or Reddit are not in and of themselves dated but they are full of remnants, of 15-year old posts and their "you, sir, have won the internet" vernacular that certainly are. Other websites are dated because they were made a long time ago by and for a clientele that doesn't have a need or the skill to update (we see this often with Web 2.0 e-commerce sites that figured out how to do a basic mobile page and reckoned it was enough). The next language of datedness, like the all-white landlord-special interior, is the default, clean Squarespace restaurant page, a landing space that's the digital equivalent of a flyer, rarely gleaned unless someone needs a menu, has a food allergy or if information about the place is not available immediately from Google Maps. I say this only to maintain that there is a continuity in practices between the on- and off-line world beyond what we would immediately assume, and that we cannot blame everything on algorithms.

But now you may ask, what is, exactly, datedness? Having spent two days in a distinctly dated hotel room, I've decided to sit in utter boredom with the numinous past and try and pin it down.

II.

I am in an obscure place. I am in Saint-Georges, Quebec, Canada, on assignment. I am staying at a specific motel, the Voyageur. By my estimation the hotel was originally built in the late seventies and I'd be shocked if it was older than 1989. The hotel exterior was remodeled sometime in the 2000s with EIFS cladding and beige paint. Above is a picture of my room, which, forgive me, is in the process of being inhabited. American (and to a lesser extent Canadian) hotel rooms are some of the most churned through, renovated spaces in the world, and it's pretty rare, unless you're staying in either very small towns or are forced by economic necessity to stay at real holes in the wall, to find ones from this era. The last real hitter for me was a 90s Day's Inn in the meme-famous Breezewood, PA during the pandemic.

At first my reaction to seeing the room was cautionary. It was the last room in town, and certainly compared to other options, probably not the world's first choice. However, after staying in real, genuine European shitholes covering professional cycling I've become a class-A connoisseur of bad rooms. This one was definitively three stars. A mutter of "okay time to do a quick look through." But upon further inspection (post-bedbug paranoia) I came to the realization that maybe the always-new brainrot I'd been so critical of had seeped a teeny bit into my own subconscious and here I was snubbing my nose at a blessing in disguise. The room is not a bad room, nor is it unclean. It's just old. It's dated. We are sentimental about interiors like this now because they are disappearing, but they are for my parents what 2005 beige-core is for me and what 2010s greige will become for the generation after. When I'm writing about datedness, I'm writing in general using a previous era's examples because datedness, by its very nature, is a transitional status. Its end state is the mixed emotion of seeing things for what they are yet still appreciating them, expressed here.

Datedness is the period between vintage and contemporary. It is the sentiment between quotidian and subpar. It is uncurated and preserved only by way of inertia, not initiative. It gives us a specific feeling we don't necessarily like, one that is deliberately evoked in the media subcultures surrounding so-called "liminal" spaces: the fuguelike feeling of being spatially trapped in a time while our real time is passing. Datedness in the real world is not a curated experience, it is only what was. It is different from nostalgia because it is not deliberately remembered, yearned for or attached to sweetness. Instead, it is somehow annoying. It is like stumbling into the world of adults as a child, but now you're the adult and the child in you is disappointed. (The real child-you forgot a dull hotel room the moment something more interesting came along.) An image of my father puts his car keys on the table, looks around and says, "It'll do." We have an intolerance for datedness because it is the realization of what sufficed. Sufficiency in many ways implies lack.

However, for all its datedness, many, if not all, of the things in this room will never be seen again if the room is renovated. They will become unpurchaseable and extinct. Things like the bizarrely-patterned linoleum tile in the shower, the hose connecting to the specific faucet of the once-luxurious (or at least middling) jacuzzi tub whose jets haven't been exercised since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wide berth of the tank on the toilet. There is nothing, really, worth saving about these things. Even the most sentimental among us wouldn't dare argue that the items and finishes in this room are particularly important from a design or historical standpoint. Not everything old has a patina. They're too cheaply made to salvage. Plastic tile. Bowed plywood. The image-artifacts of these rooms, gussied up for Booking dot com, will also, inevitably disappear, relegated to the dustheap of web caches and comments that say "it was ok kinda expensive but close to twon (sic)." You wouldn't be able to find them anyway unless you were looking for a room.

One does, of course, recognize a little bit of design in what's here. Signifiers of an era. The wood-veneer of the late 70s giving way to the pastel overtones of the 80s. Perhaps even a slow 90s. The all-in-one vanity floating above the floor, a modernist basement bathroom hallmark. White walls as a sign of cleanliness. Gestures, in the curved lines of the nightstands, towards postmodernity. Metallic lamp bases with wide-brimmed shades, a whisper of glamor. A kind of scalloped aura to the club chairs. The color teal mediated through hundreds if not thousands of shoes. Yellowing plastic, including the strips of "molding" that visually tie floor to wall. These are remnants (or are they intuitions?) of so many movements and micromovements, none of them definite enough to point to the influence of a single designer, hell, even of a single decade, just strands of past-ness accumulated into one thread, which is cheapness. Continuity exists in the materials only because everything was purchased as a set from a wholesale catalog.

In some way a hotel is supposed to be placeless. Anonymous. Everything tries to be that way now, even houses. Perhaps because we don't like the way we spy on ourselves and lease our images out to the world so we crave the specificity of hotel anonymity, of someplace we move through on our way to bigger, better or at least different things. The hotel was designed to be frictionless but because it is in a little town, it sees little use and because it sees little use, there are elements that can last far longer than they were intended and which inadvertently cause friction. (The janky door unlocks with a key. The shower hose keeps coming out of the faucet. It's deeply annoying.)

Lack of wear and lack of funds only keep them that way. Not even the paper goods of the eighties have been exhausted yet. Datedness is not a choice but an inevitability. Because it is not a choice, it is not advertised except in a utilitarian sense. It is kept subtle on the hotel websites, out of shame. Because it does not subscribe to an advertiser's economy of the now, of the curated type rather than the "here is my service" type, it disappears into the folds of the earth and cannot be searched for in the way "design" can. It can only be discovered by accident.

When I look at all of these objects and things, I do so knowing I will never see them again, at least not all here together like this, as a cohesive whole assembled for a specific purpose. I don't think I'll ever have reason to come back to this town or this place, which has given me an unexpected experience of being peevish in my father's time. Whenever I end up in a place like this, where all is as it was, I get the sense that it will take a very long time for others to experience this sensation again with the things my generation has made. The machinations of fashion work rapaciously to make sure that nothing is ever old, not people, not rooms, not items, not furniture, not fabrics, not even design, that old matron who loves to wax poetic about futurity and timelessness. The plastic-veneered particleboard used here is now the bedrock of countless landfills. Eventually it will become the chemical-laced soil upon which we build our condos. It is possible that we are standing now at the very last frontier of our prior datedness. The next one has not yet elided. It's a special place. Spend a night. Take pictures.

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[dootznbootz]

Penelope is also Athena's pet/blorbo/special little mortal/etc. and if you think otherwise you're straight up wrong.

You're also wrong if you think Athena only likes Penelope because of Odysseus and/or Telemachus. As if Athena didn't see a young Penelope pull some shit and immediately think "Oh! Another mind to mold! C'mere you! Let's do some riddles and weaving!". Athena was happy that two of her favorite pets have met and fell in love!

[asarigg]

Inside the Character's Mind: Part 2

IMPULSIVENESS AND REBELLION

I speak of Koujaku as a gentle person, consciously controlling his appearance and behavior knowingly and yet he is known as the brawler, impulsive of the group. And the truth is that it’s kinda sad, because just like the issue with women or the sword he carries on his back, it could have been built better. In his defense I must say that the only times he is seen being aggressive or taking the initiative in a confrontation in any case is with a previous provocation either towards him or because someone is hostile to Aoba. However, NC’s mistake, due to how the VN is made, is that it becomes something that happens all the time as soon as they introduce the rest of the characters.

As a child and teenager, Koujaku externalizes his rebellion and impulsiveness, and it’s a magnificent contrast to his adulthood to see how his behavior has changed after the life he had with his father. Those two characteristics of his personality haven’t gone anywhere, but they are much more controlled, watered down. This is so important for his character that it saddens me that they use it so often only to show his anger and rage instead of exploring other facets of that impulsiveness, especially when you are supposed to get to know him as a reader, it downplays when he really gets angry and his mood changes when you get into his route. The difference is still there, of course, his anger is much lighter than when he talks to Virus and Trip knowing that they “are yakuza” or when he loses his mind.

Impulsiveness doesn’t always have to be related to negative emotions, but positive ones too: when it comes to saying something, expressing his feelings for Aoba, he sometimes stumbles or doesn’t know what to say and tries to reword the sentence instead of thinking about it first, the inability to keep a cool head when Aoba needs help is not out of anger, but out of worry, stuff like that.

STORY OF SOULMATES: THE BEGINNING OF THE ROMANCE. THE INTIMACY OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP

I think it’s time to talk about his relationship with Aoba in more depth. I’d like to start by highlighting how the romantic feelings between the two of them develop. To be honest, it doesn’t really seem like there are any purely romantic scenes between them, especially when we enter Koujaku’s route, it immediately jumps to tension and mystery, seen in a superficial way one could think that there really isn’t any interaction between them to develop a relationship beyond discovering the truth about each other. But the answer is already given to us by them when they confess their feelings.

It’s not just Koujaku, but Aoba too who had these feelings way before everything. When he says that “at some point” he feels the same way, he’s not referring to any point in the route, but much earlier. What happens in Koujaku’s route would be more like an awakening, it’s the moment when Aoba realizes his feelings, how important Koujaku is to him that, at a moment when he feels like he could lose him forever, he puts everything else aside (meaning: the safety of the entire island) to focus on helping him.

Of course, this thing about not having a moment where their “friendship” develops I mean it, for example, like when Aoba has the chance to get to know Clear or Noiz better in scenes that are pretty easy going, because they are already friends before the game starts, so the kind of development they need is different. The only time something like that happens is when Koujaku carries Aoba on his back, but even then it doesn’t last long, and even during the scene Aoba still has doubts about Koujaku in his head that he doesn’t know whether to ask or not, and immediately afterward they return to the tension.

With this I don’t mean to say that this is a negative thing at all, what I want to emphasize is precisely that this kind of relationship with romantic connotations does not happen in his dedicated route, but in the common route. The “point” in which Aoba is falling in love with Koujaku happens before any of this, and it’s not until his route that he begins to realize it and finally gives it a name and it’s impossible to deny it when Koujaku confesses his own feelings. 

Obviously where this is most noticeable is in the balcony scene. Physically nothing extraordinary happens in which they say “Wow, well that just happened...”, but mentally, from Aoba’s point of view, pretty intimate things are revealed.

It’s only with Aoba that Koujaku allows himself to relax, and Aoba knows it. It must be special to him too that despite being surrounded by people, this man only lets himself be seen in front of him. This is also the reason why upon meeting him at the beginning of the game, Aoba says that he’s just acting and that fake smile only works with those people, more on this later. It’s a symbol of their intimacy, and it’s a place where they can relax without having to worry about anyone watching them. And that’s precisely why Koujaku doesn’t care that there aren’t any good views there.

It doesn’t really matter what’s on the other side of the balcony, but what’s next to him, Aoba. Being able to have a moment when he can let his guard down and not be on alert for everything and keep pretending, and it’s with someone so important that he can share a laugh with and be able to forget about everything for a moment, almost as if he could go back in time.

Koujaku said he’d stay the night but says that he remembered he had something to do, we never know what it is. We don’t have any clues if it might be about his mother, it’s never said, so I doubt it. It might be because of the reaction he had when he saw Aoba sleeping, or it could be that they just cut that part because they thought they were giving Koujaku too much time. Cowards, they’d sleep together.

Before he goes out onto the balcony, Aoba stares at him, observing his expression, and observing his hands, mentioning how pretty he thought they were, that even he himself finds it strange to think like that, despite them being full of ugly scars.

Obviously it’s not just about Koujaku’s hands alone anymore, but also about what joining their hands means to them. As children they always grabbed their hands and for Aoba that was a way of knowing that someone was with him, that he was no longer alone, it was a relief. And now that they are older it has other, much deeper romantic connotations, but not so far away.

Their hands have a romantic and vital meaning for them. But Koujaku also uses his hands as a sexual game. And when those two things come together, it becomes an especially intense moment for both of them, because they both overflow with their feelings. Aoba feels loved, wanted, needed, it makes him feel accompanied, it gives him the security that what he feels for Koujaku is completely reciprocal. It gives him support, it gives him stability.

He also sees Ren in his arms, and he trusts him to hold him. Knowing the importance of Ren for Aoba, since he is the companion who’s always guiding him, and who he can always hug when he’s not feeling well, this is even more relevant.

I think the contrast is funny because both of them grab Beni like a ball and throw him to each other. Ren is getting fluffy privilege.

If you ask me, I find it curious that in the same scene Koujaku also mentions how beautiful he thinks Aoba’s hair is, because there’s some kind of reciprocity created. Of course if Aoba is in love with Koujaku’s hands, he is in love with Aoba’s hair, both being a strong emotional connection between the two.

Once he steps out onto the balcony and catches Koujaku’s eye, he smiles at him. Well, you can see for yourself that he seems quite flirty, when he could have been drawn literally any other way.

And it's not the only time he has a flirtatious attitude towards Aoba, and he’s not seen doing this with other men, even if it was just for fun. Entre broma y broma la verdad asoma.

Aoba keeps an ashtray just for when Koujaku comes over. He doesn’t even smoke in his room, only on the balcony, he could just let the ash fall on the street or just not smoke at all but.

In the end, it’s these kinds of details that give us an idea of the romantic connotations, and knowing what’s behind them and how it connects to the ending, it becomes obvious that not only Koujaku, but also Aoba has been deeply in love with Koujaku for a long time. But they couldn’t make them too obvious because it’s the common route, and there are four other characters with dedicated routes.

In a way, they reflect a symbolic state of their relationship beyond their reality, and with this I mean that during the common route Aoba and Koujaku could be considered somewhat of a couple, and I say this mostly because of their later content. The route would be a break-up arc, it could even be interpreted as infidelity (which actually it is literally infidelity, but not sexual or romantic infidelity as it can be interpreted in a second reading. Although it focuses more on the doubt and distrust about a possible betrayal than “cheating” itself). After overcoming the problems comes the reconciliation, and I consider that there are quite a few elements that resonate in Reconnect, the Drama CD and the SSS that, some more obvious and others not so much, could be interpreted as their marriage or engagement. You probably already know what I’m talking about, but more on that later.

I know Koujaku’s traditional corny ass would NOT not ask Aoba in marriage, but there are many things that are rather done than said, and these are some of them.

[lifeinpoetry]

History is full of people who just didn’t. They said no thank you, turned away, ran away to the desert, stood on the streets in rags, lived in barrels, burned down their own houses, walked barefoot through town, killed their rapists, pushed away dinner, meditated into the light.

— Anne Boyer, from "No," published on the Poetry Foundation blog

[longreads]

In today's new Longreads essay, Elizabeth Friend examines the vanishing hitchhiker tale, and one spooky North Carolina story in particular: the tale of a young woman named Lydia. 

There are countless variations on Lydia’s story. Sometimes her dress is a specific color. Sometimes a different family member opens the door. Sometimes the young man drapes his jacket over the girl’s shoulders, only to find it later on her grave.

Elizabeth explores how folklore passed down over generations reveals our anxieties during times of change. The ghost story of Lydia reflects the shifting expectations of American women in the first half of the 20th century. 

Read “The Lessons of Lore” on Longreads.